Identify the two goals towards which India had made more progress than South Asia in 2012.

1.

2.

Suggest two reasons why some countries, such as India, still have high rates of child mortality.

1.

2.

Explain one strength and two weaknesses of the Human Development Index as a way of measuring global disparities.

Strength:

Weakness 1:

Weakness 2:

Goal 8/partnership [1] and Goal 6/diseases [1]

Award [1+1] for each valid reason, provided that it is developed by means of explanation and/or detail.

For reasons to be acceptable they have to be valid reasons in explaining high mortality for children under 5 years of age.

For example: Poor access to safe drinking water/sanitation [1] leads to many children in some regions dying from preventable diseases such as diarrhea [1].

Possibilities could include:
• limited access to health services
• malnourishment
• bias towards male babies – high infanticide rates
• poverty, large percentage still impoverished
• caste system (eg India)
• major conflicts
• maternal health
• outbreaks of deadly diseases
• high incidence of child labour.

Award [1+1] for a valid strength, provided that it is developed by means of explanation and/or detail.

For example: It is a composite/combined/multiple (accept alternative wording) index [1]; this gives a broader picture of a country’s level of development than a single indicator [1].

Other possibilities could include:
• allows for temporal comparison as has been around for a long time.

Award [1+1] for each valid weakness, provided that it is developed by means of explanation and/or detail.

For example: It is an average [1] and does not reflect disparities within a country [1].

Other possibilities could include:
• data may be unreliable
• the components have changed over time
• some essential components are missing, for example gender/human rights/happiness/environment (two missing components may be used and can be credited if they are used to demonstrate two different weaknesses).

This was well answered with hardly any candidates getting less than full marks.  
 

Plenty of very good responses here with well-developed answers ranging from sanitation to health provision to gendercide. Candidates did need to keep in mind that the question related to child mortality, which is below 5 years of age, as some responses merely explained why mortality was high and did not focus their answer on child mortality.

There were some excellent responses here but they were less common than expected given that the HDI is firmly placed within the material that needs to covered in the syllabus. Some candidates struggled to show their knowledge of the HDI and got a little confused with the MDGs and discussed those rather than the HDI. There was a lack of development from candidates when stating why a certain missing indicator was important. In terms of strengths, candidates needed to be more explicit instead of simply defining the HDI.